A new report claims Apple suppliers will begin production of its next-generation iPhone, which will feature a faster processor but few changes to its look, in July for a launch that will likely occur in September of this year.

Citing three people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported on Wednesday that Apple's next iPhone will arrive in September. The device will allegedly boast a faster processor while looking "largely similar to the iPhone 4," the report read, without providing further details.

Kuo's checks with the supply chain indicate the that iPhone 5 will include the faster A5 processor currently found in the iPad 2 and an 8-megapixel rear camera. He has also been told that the next-generation smartphone would sport a Qualcomm baseband for both GSM and CDMA models and make use of an improved antenna design.

Previous reports had also suggested that Apple would push the release of the next iPhone past the summer. In years past, Apple has released a new iPhone every summer since the first-generation iPhone launched in 2007.

Last week, sources at touch panel makers told DigiTimes that Apple had yet to release a production roadmap for the iPhone 5, making a summer launch unlikely.

It has been suggested that supply disruption related to the Japan earthquake in March has contributed to the rumored delays. Others point to a "major overhaul" as the reason for the prolonged release, though that appears to conflict with Wednesday's rumor.

Avian Securities has also echoed reports of a September launch for the iPhone 5. A recent client noted from analyst Brian White of Ticonderoga Securities said that Asian sources believe the iPhone 5 is on track for an October launch in china.

A new report claims Apple suppliers will begin production of its next-generation iPhone, which will feature a faster processor but few changes to its look, in July for a launch that will likely occur in September of this year.

Citing three people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported on Wednesday that Apple's next iPhone will arrive in September. The device will allegedly boast a faster processor while looking "largely similar to the iPhone 4," the report read, without providing further details.

Reuters' sources roughly corroborate a recent note from Concorde Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Kuo told AppleInsider earlier this week that Apple's so-called iPhone 5 would go into mass production in September. Kuo's checks with the supply chain indicate the that iPhone 5 will include the faster A5 processor currently found in the iPad 2 and an 8-megapixel rear camera.

Previous reports had also suggested that Apple would push the release of the next iPhone past the summer. In years past, Apple has released a new iPhone every summer since the first-generation iPhone launched in 2008.

Last week, sources at touch panel makers told DigiTimes that Apple had yet to release a production roadmap for the iPhone 5, making a summer launch unlikely.

It has been suggested that supply disruption related to the Japan earthquake in March has contributed to the rumored delays. Others point to a "major overhaul" as the reason for the prolonged release.

It doesn't make sense. Why delay until September if you only make minimal changes? If they delay the launch, they must work on something very hard to implement, something revolutionary, not just a faster processor.

This rumour is shaping up to look legit, but why the change in the release cycle? I cant imagine this speed bump will have affected the release schedule by a full season.

Some ideas that cross my mind:

Lion and/or new data center caused the need for this years delay?

New larger display in about the same size casing needs more lead time for devs in the new SDK for apps and their submissions to be shown at WWDC?

Need extra time to add some new HW to the iPhone 5, like a thunderbolt controller for faster syncing and charging to Macs to help legitimize the new port?

Releasing the iPad so close to iPhone proving difficult with the excessive popularity of both categories so moving them to 6 months apart was needed?

Perhaps based on the previous item, the iPhone as the most profitable HW product and iPod least having them both released at the same time for the holidays makes more sense 5 years later?

story... you have all the kids going back to school and the holidays and the BUZZ for the new new new
(drum roll here) i- whatever

but it makes PERFECT sense... this will give them enough time to add any i-extras and also have an LTE (real 4G) iphone ready , since AT$T and Verizon should have their 4G network online by then... we hope

story... you have all the kids going back to school and the holidays and the BUZZ for the new new new
(drum roll here) i- whatever

but it makes PERFECT sense... this will give them enough time to add any i-extras and also have an LTE (real 4G) iphone ready , since AT$T and Verizon should have their 4G network online by then... we hope

Verizon will have decent coverage but thats not the tricky part. The difficulty comes with a small enough and efficient enough LTE chip for the iPhone.

Its already a very small smartphone in terms of volume so I wonder where they are going to get an LTE chip that will be viable when no one else has one. Maybe they are working with Qualcomm on this. Apple does design their own ARM chips and I seem to recall the baseband processors using older ARM builds. Could Apple make this more efficient? Could they move this process onto the A5 now that it has multiple cores? Is that even something thats possible?

Dick Applebaum on whether the iPad is a personal computer: "BTW, I am posting this from my iPad pc while sitting on the throne... personal enough for you?"

Verizon will have decent coverage but thats not the tricky part. The difficulty comes with a small enough and efficient enough LTE chip for the iPhone.

Its already a very small smartphone in terms of volume so I wonder where they are going to get an LTE chip that will be viable when no one else has one. Maybe they are working with Qualcomm on this. Apple does design their own ARM chips and I seem to recall the baseband processors using older ARM builds. Could Apple make this more efficient? Could they move this process onto the A5 now that it has multiple cores? Is that even something thats possible?

they will have Qualcomm develop something for that trust me ... they have the capital to do it.

Steve Jobs claimed that the iPhone 4 took 18 months of engineering. Apple is not staffed to come up with an entirely new iPhone design on an annual basis; everything else in their product line tends to have a ~2-3 year design cycle.

Speed bumps/spec increases are pretty common at Apple with subsequent models being refinements of the existing design. It's also a way that Apple can maximize ROI from a particular design; we all know that they (and their shareholders) love big gross margins from having a design investment pay off from volume sales.

Both the iPhone 3GS and iPod touch 3G were examples of "speed bumped" models with minimal exterior design changes. It is possible that Apple's product roadmap calls for major redesigns on a periodic non-annual basis.

Why the iPhone 2011 would be delayed to September is anyone's guess, however it might related to component availability from the supply chain. This might be a silicon issue: the A5 SoC or the Qualcomm dual-mode GSM-CDMA cellular chip (present in the CDMA version of the iPhone).

Apple can do some more cool stuff with hardware next year like a bigger screen, LTE & NFC.

For now the next big change in the way mainstream users interact with computers is going to come by baking cloud integration directly into the OS, not with a processor that's a bit faster.

Everyone else is doing it and it's time for Apple to show their hand.

If they like (for stage 1 at least) they can just take my iTunes (app/video/music/tv purchases, personal pictures/video/music and backups (app data, game saves etc)) , shift it all to the cloud and enable OTA syncing of all my devices.

If they do that I'll be happy

All the other cool stuff like video/picture album publishing, file sharing and collaboration, music streaming, social integration etc etc can come later on.

The faster processor helps with certain local applications. The dual-core A5 on my iPad 2 is great for photo and video editing. The cloud doesn't really provide a lot of value-add in this scenario. And if the 720p HD original footage lives locally, you don't really want to wait for it to upload to the cloud before editing. The network connectivity isn't always there.

The cloud also doesn't help much in terms of 3D graphics performance (e.g., in games).

Cloud integration is a function of the OS, not the hardware. That's a discussion about iOS 5, not the next generation iPhone hardware. These are TCP/IP devices, the fact that you're connected via a 3G cellular data connection or WiFi shouldn't make a difference (apart from speed). My iPod touch is designed to function like an iPhone when it has a WiFi connection.

So what are those of us who are waiting for our AT&T contract to be up at the end of June supposed to do? I'll have to get the iPhone 4 in late June, so will I be stuck with that for another two years now? I just waited two years because I thought the iPhone 5 would be available in June. This sucks!

You record with your iPhone, but the iPad has a lot nicer interface to edit.

Now if only there was some way for video recorded on your iPhone to automatically sync with your iPad for editing...

I would agree that there should be seamless syncing of content across our Apple devices, but we should be able to choose if the master is at Apple or pick one of our own machines, connected to the net.

Many of the most important software concepts were invented in the 70s and forgotten in the 80s.

So what are those of us who are waiting for our AT&T contract to be up at the end of June supposed to do? I'll have to get the iPhone 4 in late June, so will I be stuck with that for another two years now? I just waited two years because I thought the iPhone 5 would be available in June. This sucks!

I'm in the same situation but I'll just let the payments run through to September off-contract and then sign a new contract then for an iPhone 5.

Many of the most important software concepts were invented in the 70s and forgotten in the 80s.

So what are those of us who are waiting for our AT&T contract to be up at the end of June supposed to do? I'll have to get the iPhone 4 in late June, so will I be stuck with that for another two years now? I just waited two years because I thought the iPhone 5 would be available in June. This sucks!

Why do you "have to get" a new phone in June? Does you current phone magically stop working after two years? Or are you just that impatient that you can't keep using it for a couple more months and get the new iPhone in the Fall?

It doesn't make sense. Why delay until September if you only make minimal changes? If they delay the launch, they must work on something very hard to implement, something revolutionary, not just a faster processor.

Or maybe one of the largest centres for electronics component manufacturing in the world was wiped off the face of the earth last month - Japan is in crisis, there are going to be impacts to product cycles and launch dates...

It doesn't make sense. Why delay until September if you only make minimal changes? If they delay the launch, they must work on something very hard to implement, something revolutionary, not just a faster processor.

I can think of 2 very good reasons:

1. Spetember is a better time of year to release this kind of product. It's usually when iPod's are announced but the iPhone's slowly killing off iPod sales so it makes sense to swap the release dates around.

2. More importantly they have no need to release another phone yet. The iPhone 4 still sells well, which is probably also why the iPhone 5 won't be revolutionary. Tech companies never actually release more than they need to. Just look at Samsungs tablet strategy and how quickly they made it thinner. They didn't come up with that just after Apple released the iPad 2, they probably already had it but didn't think Apple was going to raise the bar that high that quick and had planned it to rival the iPad 3. The same goes for the history of the iPhone, the origional could have had 3G but it didn't. The 3G could have had a decent camera but it didn't. The current iPad could have 1gb of ram but it doesn't.

Especially one that doesn't add a blue tint to indoor shots under certain lighting.

It's blue because you have 2 conflicting light sources in the frame. No camera in the world can set white-balance rightly for 2 extremely different light source. It will get one light right but not both.
If you know photography you will avoid this kind of situation on auto-white balance camera.

It doesn't make sense. Why delay until September if you only make minimal changes? If they delay the launch, they must work on something very hard to implement, something revolutionary, not just a faster processor.

A speed bump is one thing but changing the baseband chip is an entirely different matter. That alone could dictate the release date. Further, doesn't changing the baseband chip require a bunch of extra FCC testing?

I don't know if Apple's goal is to make a "universal" iPhone 5 that can be used on either Verizon Wireless's CDMA network or AT&T's GSM network but it would be like Apple to be the paradigm breaker in creating that kind of phone. At the very least, I hope they are addressing the lack of "world phone" capability in the current Verizon iPhone 4. RIM has that functionality covered quite well and it wouldn't surprise me if Apple is trying to catch up to RIM in that regard. It certainly can explain the baseband chip change all by itself.

The problem with your shot is you have exterior light mixing with interior light, both have very different color temperatures, and that's very hard or impossible to mix well without post processing.

Well I am not a photographer by any means, just point and shoot, but it is disappointing to have this happen. I asked several bystanders to take pics with their cell phones/point and shoot/dSLR cameras and best I could see, only the iPhone 4 had this blut tint. A couple were Android devices, one crap blackberry phone (which of course was horrible anyways), Canon point, and shoot and a Mark II something dSLR (which I think is overkill for internal shots like this). None had the blue tint, so I guess they do something different.

Oh well. Maybe I should learn something about post processing to clean these photos up and remove that tint. There are several like that. If anyone has any tips, just PM me.

As for this thread, I will be keeping my i4 and not updating until my contract runs out in summer 2012.

This rumour is shaping up to look legit, but why the change in the release cycle? I can’t imagine this speed bump will have affected the release schedule by a full season.

Some ideas that cross my mind:

Lion and/or new data center caused the need for this year’s delay?

New larger display in about the same size casing needs more lead time for devs in the new SDK for apps and their submissions to be shown at WWDC?

Need extra time to add some new HW to the iPhone 5, like a thunderbolt controller for faster syncing and charging to Macs to help legitimize the new port?

Releasing the iPad so close to iPhone proving difficult with the excessive popularity of both categories so moving them to 6 months apart was needed?

Perhaps based on the previous item, the iPhone as the most profitable HW product and iPod least having them both released at the same time for the holidays makes more sense 5 years later?

Do you think perhaps, as others have suggested, this maybe the iPhone 4s rather than 5?

BTW, I'd like to see an option to totally update/ backup /sync an iPhone or an iPad via wi-fi to a Mac as an option to a direct link. Heck I transfer well over 10 gigs regularly via my AE between Macs on my network.

Off Topic: Why is AI soooo slow these days?

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"

Well I am not a photographer by any means, just point and shoot, but it is disappointing to have this happen. I asked several bystanders to take pics with their cell phones/point and shoot/dSLR cameras and best I could see, only the iPhone 4 had this blut tint. A couple were Android devices, one crap blackberry phone (which of course was horrible anyways), Canon point, and shoot and a Mark II something dSLR (which I think is overkill for internal shots like this). None had the blue tint, so I guess they do something different.

Oh well. Maybe I should learn something about post processing to clean these photos up and remove that tint. There are several like that. If anyone has any tips, just PM me.

As for this thread, I will be keeping my i4 and not updating until my contract runs out in summer 2012.

I suspect you are seeing the result of a 'feature' not a problem. The iPhone 4's ability to actually show the brighter outside while managing to expose the darker areas in a single shot. In most cameras the highlights would blow out or the shadows would go dark depending on your aperture. If you read up on the iPhone 4's system it is using a special technique now also available on high end Nikons etc. to do this (simply put, an extraordinarily extended dynamic rage). I won't elaborate here as it has all been discussed on this forum many times. White balancing in traditional photography hasn't had to deal with this before since one couldn't photograph both the highlights and shadows with different lighting temperatures, in the same image. Your picture obviously is showing this really well

If you think about it you are seeing reality in a photograph rather than what you have become accustomed to due to the limitations of cameras in the past. The temperature of light really is different between the outside and the artificial lights. There are web sites out there from a few years ago featuring such images that took very expensive software and the combination of three HD images (taken with different apertures) to achieve this same result. People flocked to them as the images were so amazing. Now you are complaining ... I have to chuckle.

From Apple ][ - to new Mac Pro I've owned them all.Long on AAPL so biased"Google doesn't sell you anything, Google just sells you!"